Vacuum planters are often used to plant any of a variety of seeds, including seeds with odd shapes, such as corn seeds, pumpkin seeds, soybean seeds, among others. These planters have vertical plates with holes that are smaller than the seeds being planted. The planter draws a vacuum on the side of the plate opposite the container in which the seeds are stored. When the plate rotates through the storage container, atmospheric pressure holds seeds against the holes and allows the rotating plate to pick up seeds. As the plate rotates around past the seed tube, the vacuum is broken, allowing the seeds to drop down a seed tube.
A problem associated with the use of vacuum planters in particular is that, in some circumstances, they have a tendency to release a certain amount of seed dust during planting. This dust may include active ingredients, such as insecticides, nematicides, fungicides, and/or other pesticides that have been combined with the seed. The loss of such active ingredients during planting is undesirable. In some cases, therefore, a polymer binder is included with the active ingredients in the treatment of seeds to bind the active ingredient to the seed, thereby reducing the amount of dust generated during planting, particularly vacuum planting. Historically, this polymer binder has been a polyolefin, such as a carboxylated styrene/butadiene dispersion. Nevertheless, a certain amount of dust is still generated during the vacuum planting process even when seeds are treated in such a manner.
As a result, it would be desirable to provide seed treatments that significantly reduce the amount of seed dust generated during planting, such as vacuum planting. The present invention was made in view of the foregoing desire.